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I can’t stop thinking about the mom who was talking to her daughter on the phone while she was walking to her car on campus the other night. I can’t come to grips with how awful it would be to relive that moment over and over. According to the mom, she heard her daughter yell, “No! No! No!” and that was it. She was afraid her daughter was in a car accident.

Jill McCluskey, mother of Lauren McCluskey and economics professor at Washington State University, shared this statement on Twitter:

My daughter was friends with Lauren. They knew each other from athletics at the University of Utah, because it’s a close-knit community. This was such a tragedy for the entire campus, community and the family. My daughter said that Lauren was so nice! Once Waffles had run away and it was Lauren who found him and brought him back to her. My heart goes out to the McCluskey family. When we send our kids off to school, its with dreams and stars in our eyes for their great futures. We don’t expect anything like this.

Here’s a Go Fund Me campaign started by a fellow student at the University of Utah. Please think about supporting Lauren’s family.

The third time is the charm. The book Mindset, The New Psychology of Success by Carol. S. Dweck, Ph.D. Stanford University, was recommended to me three times. First, by a long-time coach, Tim Hill. Second, I heard about it in a webinar by David Benzel from Growing Champions for Life. Third, my son’s employer gave him the book on his first day at work and he said I had to read it. So, I finally did. I highly recommend that you read it, too.

Mindset is packed full of studies, research and entertaining stories about students, parents, teachers—and well-known musicians, coaches and athletes. In one chapter called, “Sports: The Mindset of a Champion,” I learned about the growth mindsets of tremendous athletes such as Michael Jordan and Jackie Joyner-Kersee. In another chapter called “Parents, Teachers and Coaches: Where do Mindsets Come From?”it described the differences in mindsets of two college basketball coaches—John Wooden and Bob Knight.

Dweck explained fixed versus growth mindsets: “In one world—the world of fixed traits—success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other—the world of changing qualities—it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.

“People in a growth mindset don’t just seek challenge, they thrive on it. The bigger the challenge, the more they stretch. And nowhere can it be seen more clearly than in the world of sports. You can just watch people stretch and grow.”

Although people are usually a mixture of both mindsets, since mindsets are beliefs, they can be changed. We should encourage our kids to have growth mindsets because they will thrive in the long run by learning how to work harder and smarter. They won’t be afraid of a challenge and they will persevere.

If we constantly tell our kids how smart or how athletically gifted they are, we are giving them a fixed mindset. That means they will believe in their innate talent, and that hard work will label them as NOT talented. When things get harder, they will not rise to the challenge. They will lose interest or go back to finding something easier for them, so they can still be recognized as being a “genius” or “gifted athlete.”

What we should do is recognize our kids’ hard work. We need to tie in the process they go through to achievement. If we notice our children are working hard, but not achieving the success they desire, maybe they aren’t using the right strategies. We can help them try a new method.

The best teachers and coaches are ones with growth mindsets. They haven’t predetermined a child’s success. They treat all their students and athletes as important and they figure out a way to help each individual grow and thrive.

What is the mindset of a champion?

“It goes by different names, but it’s the same thing. It’s what makes you practice, and it’s what allows you to dig down and pull it out when you most need it,” Dweck wrote.

Last year, I spent this week with my daughter in Salt Lake City. What a wonderful time we had together shopping, hiking, and visiting Park City and Deer Valley–and just hanging out together. This is one of the stories I wrote while staying with her.

Experiencing the beach.

My daughter and I walked into an elevator yesterday at Nordstrom’s with a mom pushing a Thule baby stroller, snapping pics of her infant and tapping away on her phone to post the pics. My daughter whispered to me, “Thank God they didn’t have iPhones when I was a kid!”

I told her I was thankful that their early childhood was before the era of smartphones, too.

Later, I asked her why she was glad we didn’t have iPhones. Her answer surprised me. “Because you would have been taking photos constantly and posting every moment of my life on FaceBook,” she said.

Psychologists warn about kids spending too much time in front of screens and not enough of their time outdoors in an article in the DailyMail.com called “Why children should not be selfie stars:”

In advice to parents, Dr. Godsi said: ‘Leave technology at home. When you go out as a family leave mobile devices switched off and have a rule that says no mobile phones during family meal times.’

The author added: ‘In my opinion selfies should not be encouraged.

‘I think there is a place for taking a few photos, as a way to help families remember or look back and to share memories but the constant pressure to post on social media means there’s a risk that they (children) don’t experience anything except through a lens.’

My daughter said that once I got my first iPhone and was learning how to use it, “You relentlessly posted ugly, fat pictures of me on FaceBook.”

I view those photos not as ugly, but on a scale of cute to adorable to gorgeous.

Learning about the ocean in Junior Lifeguards.

I explained that I was so glad she and her brother weren’t posing for pictures constantly, weren’t worried about what other kids were doing at the moment, but went outside to play. That’s why I’m glad the iPhone wasn’t a thing in their early years.

When we had kids over, they weren’t sitting side by side texting each other. No, they were running around the backyard and house playing a reverse hide-and-seek game called sardines—for hours on end.

When we were at the beach, they were jumping in the waves, body surfing, building drip castles, digging holes and yes—occasionally fighting and throwing sand. As annoying and painful as throwing sand was–especially dealing with sand in the eyes–it sure beats constantly posing for pictures.

My daughter says there is room for both. When she goes to the beach with friends, they now get a few pics, then toss the phones in a beach bag and dive under the waves.

Here are a few frightening stats from the article in the UK Mail:

Dr. Godsi spoke out after a survey of 2,000 parents by outdoor education provider, Kingswood, found that the biggest source of quality time among families is spent watching TV together. Sixty-eight percent cited this as their main activity shared with children, followed by going to the cinema (35 per cent) and playing computer games (24 per cent).

The average age of the parents’ children was ten, while 445 were seven.

Asked to look back to when all their youngsters were seven, 85 percent of families said their sons or daughters had never gone camping.

Sixty-five percent said they had never played pooh sticks or climbed a tree (51 percent).

Forty-one per cent admitted their children had never been on a bike ride, paddled in the sea (43 percent) or played in a park (31 percent).

It’s very easy to get sedentary. It’s also easy not to talk to each other when we’re buried and focused on our screens. I’m lucky to spend this week with my daughter just hanging out and being with each other.

What are your thoughts about selfies, kids and family time? Do your kids spend enough time without their phones experiencing outdoors?

Parents need to be in the moment with their kids—not on their phones. I read a story in the Atlantic by Erika Christakis with lots of studies about how kids learn by hearing our voices, tones and through interaction. When we detach with our phones or are continually interrupting interaction, it affects our children’s healthy development.

My own daughter yells at me whenever I was with her but busy texting someone else—usually my son. She’d say “Mom, I’m here with you now!” Of course, she also is on her phone a lot and does snap chats while she’s with me. I don’t snap chat and really I don’t get it. Texting is enough for me. When my husband and I were first married, we’d go to our favorite Mexican restaurant for Huevos Ranchero on Saturday morning. We’d take different sections of the LA Times and read, rather than talk with each other. One week we saw a friend and he said, “Is this what married life is like? You stop talking?” We laughed at the time, but how many times do you see couples or families out together and everyone is busy on their screens?

The article cites several studies and it really emphasizes how damaging it is for us to be on our phones. It’s more damaging than our kids having way too much screen time themselves. Here are several excerpts from her article:

When it comes to children’s development, parents should worry less about kids’ screen time—and more about their own.

Smartphones have by now been implicated in so many crummy outcomes—car fatalities, sleep disturbances, empathy loss, relationship problems, failure to notice a clown on a unicycle—that it almost seems easier to list the things they don’t mess up than the things they do. Our society may be reaching peak criticism of digital devices.

Even so, emerging research suggests that a key problem remains underappreciated. It involves kids’ development, but it’s probably not what you think. More than screen-obsessed young children, we should be concerned about tuned-out parents.

Yes, parents now have more face time with their children than did almost any parents in history. Despite a dramatic increase in the percentage of women in the workforce, mothers today astoundingly spend more time caring for their children than mothers did in the 1960s. But the engagement between parent and child is increasingly low-quality, even ersatz. Parents are constantly present in their children’s lives physically, but they are less emotionally attuned. To be clear, I’m not unsympathetic to parents in this predicament. My own adult children like to joke that they wouldn’t have survived infancy if I’d had a smartphone in my clutches 25 years ago.

Yet for all the talk about children’s screen time, surprisingly little attention is paid to screen use by parents themselves, who now suffer from what the technology expert Linda Stone more than 20 years ago called “continuous partial attention.” This condition is harming not just us, as Stone has argued; it is harming our children. The new parental-interaction style can interrupt an ancient emotional cueing system, whose hallmark is responsive communication, the basis of most human learning. We’re in uncharted territory.

In the early 2010s, researchers in Boston surreptitiously observed 55 caregivers eating with one or more children in fast-food restaurants. Forty of the adults were absorbed with their phones to varying degrees, some almost entirely ignoring the children (the researchers found that typing and swiping were bigger culprits in this regard than taking a call). Unsurprisingly, many of the children began to make bids for attention, which were frequently ignored. A follow-up study brought 225 mothers and their approximately 6-year-old children into a familiar setting and videotaped their interactions as each parent and child were given foods to try. During the observation period, a quarter of the mothers spontaneously used their phone, and those who did initiated substantially fewer verbal and nonverbal interactions with their child.

Occasional parental inattention is not catastrophic (and may even build resilience), but chronic distraction is another story. Smartphone use has been associated with a familiar sign of addiction: Distracted adults grow irritable when their phone use is interrupted; they not only miss emotional cues but actually misread them. A tuned-out parent may be quicker to anger than an engaged one, assuming that a child is trying to be manipulative when, in reality, she just wants attention. Short, deliberate separations can of course be harmless, even healthy, for parent and child alike (especially as children get older and require more independence). But that sort of separation is different from the inattention that occurs when a parent is with a child but communicating through his or her nonengagement that the child is less valuable than an email. A mother telling kids to go out and play, a father saying he needs to concentrate on a chore for the next half hour—these are entirely reasonable responses to the competing demands of adult life. What’s going on today, however, is the rise of unpredictable care, governed by the beeps and enticements of smartphones. We seem to have stumbled into the worst model of parenting imaginable—always present physically, thereby blocking children’s autonomy, yet only fitfully present emotionally.

When you’re with your kids, be with in the moment.

When you’re with your children or spouse, how do you handle it when your kids are on their phones? Do you put your phone down or have a rule?

The flower arrangement I made at Seasons by My Little Flower Shop in Palm Springs.

First, my daughter and I went to a flower-arranging class at Seasons by My Little Flower Shop in downtown Palm Springs. We were invited by close friends from the Piranha Swim Team. My friend’s two daughters bought her a flower-arranging class for Mother’s Day. I was so tickled that they asked me to join them. I asked to include my daughter, who is home for one more week. My friend’s daughters are both older than my daughter by four and five years, but that swim team connection is a bond that never lets go. They both swam for USC, and even though my daughter was a Ute, they have the shared experience of being PAC 12 student-athletes.

We learned some basics about flower arranging, which I never knew. First, never let any of the greens touch the water. The greens decompose and create bacteria which kills flowers in a few days. When you buy a bunch of flowers from the grocery store, always strip the greens down where the water will be and your arrangement should last up to ten days.

The other thing I learned was to buy some clear florist tape at Joanne’s or Michael’s. On the top of the vase, put a strip of tape across the center, then two more strips evenly on each side. Then do the same perpendicularly. You’ll end with a grid that will support your flowers and keep them standing up.

The next thing we did to raise my spirits was escaping the desert and driving to the mountains. It’s starting to get hot and being stuck inside isn’t a joy. Up in the mountains at Big Bear Lake, it’s not only gorgeous but the high was 77 degrees as opposed to 111 at home. We went for a walk, set up our motorhome for the summer, went out to lunch at our favorite restaurant the North Shore Cafe and relaxed in the cool mountain air. We had Waffles as our buddy and he loved it since he hates the heat.

Here are pictures from our day in Big Bear:

Third, one of my friends in Seattle took my mom to Bingo on Sunday. I’ve written about my Bingo days with mom and how much she’s loved it. I’ve been looking for someone to take her because she refuses to go on her own–even though it’s down the hall from her room. I was reminiscing about Rebecca with the childhood friend who was married to her years ago. I mentioned my mom to him. (Our parents have been friends for decades and we used to go on camping trips together as families). He immediately volunteered and said that he thought going to Bingo with Mom would be “a hoot.” I called her afterward and she sounded so happy. Which made me happy, too.

One thing that losing a good friend has taught me is to not take anyone for granted and to reach out to friends and family.

I am sitting at home after my morning walk with Waffles the pug, enjoying my cup of coffee–like nothing has happened. Yesterday at this time, I was driving across the desert from Cima to Amboy. I actually love that drive through the desert Mojave National Preserve and Sheephole Valley Wilderness. There is so much vast space—desert wilderness and craggy mountains with nothing but Joshua trees and wildflowers. We saw exactly one car going our way. There were five or six heading in the other direction towards Vegas.

We left on Wednesday to drive 652 miles for our daughter’s graduation. With my recent surgery, there’s no way I could sit in a car for 10 hours, so we broke it up with an overnight stay in St. George. I keep saying that I’d like to go to the beautiful sites around St. George like Zion National Park, but we’re always on our way to Salt Lake City with no time to explore. Someday, we say.

Walking into the Huntsman Center for graduation.

So, to get on with the story, we drove for two days for our daughter’s graduation. She was also moving out of the house she’s lived in for three years. Needless to say, she has a ton of stuff and although most of the work was done, there wasn’t a lot of time to relax. On the day of her graduation, we were working out where to pack and ship boxes that would not fit in her storage unit with furniture, kitchen stuff and winter tires — or either of our cars. Then graduation happened. I was shocked to see literally more than a thousand graduates in her major. We skipped the general commencement and I’m glad about that. The David Eccles School of Business was plenty long and meaningful. Then it was off to dinner with her friends at one of our favorite places, Valter’s Osteria. It’s a perfect place for a celebratory meal. And we listened to three or four happy birthday songs while we ate a delicious Italian meal.

This guy is mine for the next three months.

The next morning we were up early and she was letting in the carpet cleaners and throwing away junk left by the previous year’s roommates. On the road, we stopped to say goodbye to our dear friends, my husband’s childhood friend Pastor Scott of CenterPoint Church in Orem, who’s been a surrogate dad to our daughter these past four years.

Eventually, we made it home, and I wonder where the past few days went–let alone the past four years. I haven’t had time to process graduation, much less have time to enjoy it. All I can say is I’m glad my daughter is home for a few weeks. It feels so right to have her here–although she will be leaving soon for her next adventure in life.

HAPPY MAY DAY 2018! I sent my mom a basket of flowers today. I’m waiting for her call. Here are my reflections of May Days past.

In first grade, my teacher Mrs. Iverson showed us how to make May Day baskets from pink and yellow construction paper. We drew ivy and flowers on the paper baskets with our thick crayons before going up one-by-one to our teacher to get the handle stapled on.

On the way home from school, we walked together picking dandelions and soft lavender-colored clover to fill our baskets.

We took turns “May Daying” the neighbors.

I climbed the steps to Mrs. Fixie’s front door. She was the grandmotherly lady with the neat white bun on top of her head who often gave me home-made oatmeal cookies.

I hung the basket on her doorknob. Then, I rang her doorbell and ran as far as my first-grade legs would take me. I hid behind a hedge and watched her open the front door and scan the neighborhood.

Then, she looked at her doorknob at the paper basket filled with flowering weeds. A big smile broke across her face.

“Happy May Day!” I yelled jumping up behind the shrubs.

Where did this fun tradition begin? But, more importantly, where did it go?

Do your kids make May Day baskets in school? Do they surprise your elderly neighbors with baskets of flowers and sunshine on May 1st?

My mom is in an assisted living home two states away. She’ll be getting a delivery from FTD today of a little basket of flowers. The card will read “Happy May Day! Love, ?”

She’ll say, “Really? I could have sworn it was you! I wonder who sent me these flowers?”

That’s how we keep our May Day tradition alive. My son sent me a text to wish me “Happy May Day” first thing this morning. My daughter may pick some snapdragons and roses from our backyard and pound on the door tonight after school and her swim meet.

I’ll run outside and won’t be able to contain the smile on my face as I race around the yard trying to catch her.

Happy May Day, everyone! How do you celebrate May Day? Do your kids make baskets?